PostMortems

PostMortem Objectives

The objectives for CODE Magazine's PostMortem articles are similar to those of other
post-mortems. Your project is complete. You used interesting technologies and techniques.
You analyze what went right and what could have gone better. Some things turned
out to be very good decissions, others almost sunk the ship. You probably learned
some lessons, and we would like to communicate those to our readers in addition
to just showing off your cool project and give people something to be excited about.

Article Format

PostMortem articles start with a brief description of what the goals of the project were and
what the overall scenario and boundary conditions were. Explain the type of project. Did you
have a particular technology you wanted to use? Who were the project stakeholders and what were
there top priorities? Who was the intended user base? What made the project different from your
other projects or from your competitor's projects?

If you can, also tell us about your development team. What else have they worked on? What were the
team dynamics? What's the corporate culture? ...

Also tell us about the tools you used in the project. Development environment, third party tools,
hardware,... You may also want to mention the intended runtime environment.

After you set the initial stage, the main part of the article begins. The core of the article
focusses on 5 things that went well and 5 things that went wrong (referred to by the more positive
term "challenges").

List 5 points about your project that went flawlessly or better than expected.
Were there any phases of development that you thought would be much harder than you had planned?
Did a new programmer come on the team and inject great ideas or brilliant programming ability into
the effort? Did a new technology become widely adopted by consumers that solved a particularly
thorny development problem? Did new development tools become available that let you work more
efficiently? Did you save money in certain ways you hadn't expected? Cut days/weeks/months off
the schedule in some way you hadn't expected to?

List 5 points about your project that were problematic or failed completely.
Did the lead programmer leave the company halfway throughout the project? Did adapting to new
technologies create unanticipated problems for the developers? Did your development tools let
you down in some way or not live up to expectations? Did hidden costs creep into the project,
and if so, where did they come from? Did the schedule slip for some reason? Was the quality
control cycle problematic for some reason? Did features get axed because of scheduling pressures?
We don't want you to look bad, but we want you to share potential issues people can learn from.
We also want you to explain how you overcame these difficulties. That is why we call these 5 points
"challenges" and not "failures".

Important: try to come up with things that went right/wrong during project that are likely
unique to your project. Stay away from common and well understood problems and solutions (e.g.,
"communication between the team members wasn't good" -- that's been true of most projects), and focus on
what made your project different from others. Surprise the reader!

Also important: We know you are nice people who do wonderful work, but the PostMortem article
is not the place to engage in PR, display gratuitous self-aggrandizement or try to kiss up to your boss/client.
You will of course get recognition and visibility by writing a CODE Magazine PostMortem, and this effect is
desired and intended. But to get the most people reading the PostMortem, provide beefy information, not marketing noise.
Try to focus on the actual development process itself and what you learned professionally, bearing in mind
that the audience for your article is other developers and not your manager or client.

Include Images and Screen Shots

A picture is worth a thousand words. Include screen shots and other images from your application. People want
to see what your application looks like.

Screen shots should always be taken using standard color schemes (especially if you include screen shots showing
source code, make sure you reset Visual Studio (or whatever IDE you are using) to the default colors. Send your
screen shots as BMPs without compression. Never resize or compress images.

Photographs always need to be sent in high resolution (300dpi min). Photos of the development team or your offices
are often interesting.

Project Facts

We like to include interesting facts and statistics about your project. How many developers worked on it? How
many classes did you create? How many builds did you create? Here are some examples of interesting ideas (some
may apply to your projects, and you may even be able to come up with other interesting examples):

Number of full-time developers assigned ot the project. Also number of part-time developers or contractors.

Number of full-time, part-time and contract designers.

Ballpark budget of the project (if allowed).

Overall duration of the project.

Tools used on the project (Visual Studio, TFS,...)

Third party tools and products used on the project.

Runtime and deployment environment for the project.

If applicable, a public URL or download URL for the finished product.

Hardware used during the development of the project (type of computers, CPU, memory,...).

Size of the project (number of classes, lines of code, number of files,...).

Other notable technologies used in the project.

Length of Article

The length of the PostMortem article should be in the 3000-4000 word range. Broken down, that allows you to write
about 3-4 paragraphs on each of the wrongs and rights of the project, plus an intro and conclusion. If you feel
more space is warranted, we are flexible, but please coordinate with us.

Editorial Calendar

Jan/Feb 2018 - Mobile Development

iOS 11

Designing for Mobile

Xamarin

March/April 2018 - Web Development

.NET Core

HTML 5

JavaScript

Angular

May/June 2018 - Development Practices

DevOPS

Agile

Programming Tools

July/Aug 2018 - Programming Languages

Python

C#

GO

others...

Sept/Oct 2018 - Future Tech

Machine Learning

Business Intelligence

AI

Nov/Dec 2018 - .NET Technology

Visual Studio 201X

.NET Framework

Visual Studio Mac

Please note that CODE Magazine reserves the right to change topics at any time.

Questions? Contact Us!

If you are interested in writing for CODE Magazine, please email our Editor, Rod Paddock, or fill out the form here.